Shift workers on Earth can control telerobots on the Moon with only a 2.6 second time delay. But on Mars, robots will need to be fairly autonomous. On both the Moon and Mars, robots can harvest and process metals to make the bulky parts of even more robots. Assemble with relatively low-mass electronics shipped from Earth and the robotic workforce can grow exponentially.

One of the most useful types of robots would be a dexterous robot which we term the DexBot. With its head and hands, it will be able to manipulate any number of objects. For example, equipment could be designed with movable parts such as motors and joints which have easily-activated quick release mechanisms that the DexBots could remove and swap with spare parts. In this way, a 1 kg motor could keep a 10 kg vehicle operating to produce 100 kg of local product. For this reason, the Moon and Mars with their immediate resources would be cheaper to support than closer locations such as low Earth orbit where all of the mass must be imported.